The National Guard has never been as combat-ready as it is now. Yet, as deployments to Iraq are scaled back and eventually Afghanistan operations begin to draw down, the role of the Guard once again will become the subject of intense debate.
Critics have questioned whether the size of the Guard — at an all-time high of 476,500 Army and Air Guardsmen combined — should be reduced as defense budgets begin to tighten. Congressional supporters have argued that Guard strength should be maintained or even expanded, so it can handle homeland security missions that have been under-resourced because of war commitments.
In all likelihood, there will be serious competition for resources among the services following the current operations, and the Guard may lose out to the active-duty forces, experts said.
“I would hope that as the war starts to wind down, the chief of the Guard Bureau and the secretaries of the services would sit down together without a food fight over resources and figure out what’s best for the country,” said retired Maj. Gen. Gus L. Hargett Jr., president of the National Guard Association of the United States. “Nothing will be more important than to get the size of the force right with the right capabilities in the right place.”
Guard proponents argue that the nation’s forefathers meant for the country to retain a smaller military force in peacetime with the capability to surge during wartime. “I think the Guard and reserve have proven they can do that,” said Hargett. “What we should see at the end of this war is a Guard and reserve that is about the same as it is now … or larger, and an active force that is a good deal smaller. It saves the country a lot of dollars.”
As the debate unfolds, the Guard continues to support the war efforts with thousands of troops. The chief of the National Guard Bureau, Air Force Gen. Craig R. McKinley, is committing at least 55,000 to 60,000 Army Guardsmen, out of a force of 370,000, to overseas combat deployments for the foreseeable future. “That’s a significant contribution when you know that we have to have some force in reserve here at home for the disasters that are going to occur,” he said.
Balancing war and homeland duties is his priority, McKinley said in an interview in Virginia Beach, Va., during the Joint Warfighting Conference sponsored by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute. He is concerned about the U.S. economic downturn but he also worries that rushing to downsize the Guard could result in a dramatic loss of military readiness that always seems to follow periods of war.
“Traditionally after most conflicts in our nation, we’ve put the Guard and reserves back into the can on the shelf and it atrophies and has gone back to a state of disrepair,” he said. He does not want to see that happen again. The Guard should not have to end up like a Roman candle on the 4th of July — a firework that burns brightly for a set time before fizzling out, he said.
McKinley plans to place greater emphasis on training and education after the current wars end so that combat skills are not lost.
A recent independent panel that evaluated the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review recommended a re-examination of the role of the Guard and reserves with “an eye to ensuring that a portion of the National Guard be dedicated to and funded for homeland defense.”
“Our panel thinks we really need to re-think the relationship between the active force and the Guard and reserve, and whether we even need some mobilization capability beyond the Guard and reserve,” said panel co-chair Stephen Hadley before the House Armed Services Committee. “What is the role of the Guard? How much of it is an operational reserve? How much is a strategic reserve? How much should it have an enhanced role for homeland issues? All of these need to be rethought, because if there are missions that can be adequately or better done in the Guard or reserve, it’s cheaper. That takes some of the pressure off the active force.”
By virtue of fighting in the current conflicts, the Guard is fully prepared to contend with homeland issues, Hargett said. Many of the skills they have honed for the counterinsurgency and stability operations overseas can be applied to emergency response efforts domestically.
But there is room for improvement. McKinley acknowledged the Guard needs to step up its homeland security capabilities. “Our weaknesses are here at home,” he said. The organization needs to figure out how to better share information and coordinate domestic operations with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Working side by side with active-duty forces during the past eight years of war has benefitted the Guard, McKinley said. “This seamless integration that has occurred on the battlefield has got to take place at home too,” he added.
One of McKinley’s frustrations is the difficulty of sharing intelligence with state adjutants general offices because of red tape and firewalls. “I can’t get information from the FBI and CIA to where it needs to go,” McKinley said. “I’m struggling to find ways to break down the barriers of classification and communication, to push the same information that [Defense Department officials] have down to those people who can actually use it and maybe prevent another incident like we saw on Sept. 11.”
The Guard needs modern communication systems to interact and exchange data at the state and local level. Bridging those information gaps is critical for the Guard to carry out its future homeland defense and disaster relief missions, McKinley said. “We’re reaching a point where response may take a different shape and it may need the whole-of-government approach to a solution,” he explained.
The 9/11 attacks exposed the nation’s disorganized response capability. None of the local, state and federal agencies had ever needed to collaborate before on that scale. Officials believe future crises in the homeland will require far more tightly coordinated response efforts.
“If there was anything 9/11 taught me, it was: Don’t have another failure of imagination, because anything can happen,” said McKinley. He noted that many of the disasters so far this year, including the BP oil spill, the European volcano eruption and the Haiti earthquake, had not been anticipated and the response to these situations was not rapid enough.
The Guard and other domestic agencies need to spend the resources up front to train, organize and be ready for any event, he added. “These are the challenges of the 21st century. They’re not greater or lesser than other generations have faced, but they require unique approaches, and they require consultation, and they require relationships,” he said.
McKinley is keen on forging a closer partnership with U.S. Northern Command. He is working with its commander, Navy Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., whose job is to anticipate and conduct homeland defense and civil support operations. In the past, there have been instances where the bureaucracy has stood in the way of “really getting down to brass tacks, communicating and resolving,” McKinley noted. Winnefeld is helping solidify the command-Guard relationship by meeting with the adjutants general in August, he said.
“I’m looking forward now to us getting to a point where we can sit down staff to staff and partner in ways that we have not done before for the betterment of the citizens of the nation,” said McKinley. “There can be no seam, there can be no rivalry, and there can be no ‘who’s in charge.’”
McKinley counts on the 54 adjutants general to manage state and local relationships. Those interactions, liaisons and personal contact with authorities will pay off when a crisis occurs and troops need to respond and access areas quickly to provide relief within the first 24 hours.
For lessons in conducting homeland defense operations, McKinley is looking for additional insight from other nations. This summer he visited Israel to observe a nationwide exercise that was designed to show how Israeli defense forces and their home front command supported civil authorities during a crisis. All of the nation’s citizens participated. “I want to see how the unity of effort situation works in Israel,” he said. “I’m really looking at their full spectrum of operations on behalf of the adjutants general, to see how their command structure functions within the government.”
McKinley was most interested in how Israeli hospitals reacted in the mass casualty exercise and how the security forces in particular cordoned off assaulted areas to prevent ambushes. He collected lessons to bring back to the Guard.
Equipment modernization is another critical item on McKinley’s agenda. He praised the Army and Air Force for supporting the procurement of new equipment for the Guard. But in cases where there is still not enough to go around, the Guard will pursue more partnerships with active-duty units to share equipment so all units can remain trained and qualified. As an example, he cited the success of a Richmond-based Virginia Air National Guard unit that formerly flew F-16s pairing with the active Air Force 1st Fighter Wing to fly F-22 Raptors from Langley Air Force Base, Va.